[jaunty][i915GM] intel xserver very sluggish and chewing cpu

[Gavin McCullagh]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-intel

Hi,

Regardless of application (even just an xterm shows it), there are constant little latencies. Even typing this report it painful. A reboot didn't solve it.

Top shows higher cpu usage for X than would have been normal in Intrepid. This 25-26% is moreorless constant.

Tasks: 124 total, 3 running, 121 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 6.6%us, 18.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 74.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 2053944k total, 872160k used, 1181784k free, 40788k buffers
Swap: 497972k total, 0k used, 497972k free, 515696k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 3590 root 20 0 327m 22m 9324 R 23.5 1.1 8:54.68 /usr/bin/X :0 -br -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xaut
 7901 gavinmc 20 0 224m 85m 24m S 0.7 4.2 0:26.61 /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.5/firefox
 3857 gavinmc 20 0 26004 6576 5268 S 0.3 0.3 0:00.65 x-session-manager
 4068 gavinmc 20 0 25964 12m 9232 S 0.3 0.6 0:01.72 /usr/lib/gnome-applets/cpufreq-applet --oaf-activate-
13758 gavinmc 20 0 2448 1172 896 R 0.3 0.1 0:00.04 top
    1 root 20 0 3080 1888 568 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.32 /sbin/init
    2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 [kthreadd]
    3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 [migration/0]
    4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.18 [ksoftirqd/0]
    5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 [watchdog/0]
    6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 [events/0]
    7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 [khelper]
   10 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 [kstop/0]
  122 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 [kintegrityd/0]
  124 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 [kblockd/0]
  126 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 [kacpid]

gavinmc@bambi:~$ apt-cache policy xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-intel
xserver-xorg:
  Installed: 1:7.4~5ubuntu9
  Candidate: 1:7.4~5ubuntu9
  Version table:
 *** 1:7.4~5ubuntu9 0
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
xserver-xorg-video-intel:
  Installed: 2:2.5.1-1ubuntu7
  Candidate: 2:2.5.1-1ubuntu7
  Version table:
 *** 2:2.5.1-1ubuntu7 0
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I will attach the files which seem necessary (xorg.conf, lspci, etc). Do shout if more is needed.

[Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh)]

The machine itself is a laptop Dell Latitude D410 with a 2GHz pentium M and 2GB RAM and a 120GB ide hard disk.

[Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh)]

I had intended uploading the 6MB Xorg.0.log. After two failures to upload (perhaps due to size), I stopped gdm and switched to w3m in a TTY to upload. This seemed to be proceeding. I then gzipped the log file into /tmp in case that failed. I then (stupidly) restarted gdm. The machine hung with capslock and numlock flashing together evenly on-off-on-off.

I'm not sure if that's the same issue or not as yet but it seems possible. After hard reset, both copies of the X logfile are gone. The compression achieved was massive (6MB to 50KB odd) so I'm guessing it might have been full of the same error, but I hadn't yet looked at the file itself.

I'll have a look through the other logs to see if there's a clue.

[Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh)]

/var/log/syslog around the crash contains:

Jan 5 21:16:07 bambi sudo: pam_sm_authenticate: Called
Jan 5 21:16:07 bambi sudo: pam_sm_authenticate: username = [gavinmc]
Jan 5 21:16:07 bambi sudo: Error attempting to parse .ecryptfsrc file; rc = [-5]
Jan 5 21:16:07 bambi sudo: Warning: Using default salt value (undefined in ~/.ecryptfsrc)
Jan 5 21:16:08 bambi sudo: Error attempting to open [/home/gavinmc/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase] for reading
Jan 5 21:16:08 bambi sudo: Error attempting to unwrap passphrase from file [/home/gavinmc/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase]; rc = [-5]
Jan 5 21:16:08 bambi sudo: Error adding passphrase key token to user session keyring; rc = [-5]
Jan 5 21:16:08 bambi gdm[27582]: WARNING: Didn't understand `' (expected true or false)
Jan 5 21:16:08 bambi acpid: client connected from 27589[0:0]
Jan 5 21:16:13 bambi gdmgreeter[27696]: Gtk-WARNING: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "ubuntulooks",
Jan 5 21:21:23 bambi syslogd 1.5.0#5ubuntu2: restart.

none of which looks terribly severe.